Page 12 - Black Range Naturalist, Vol. 1, No. 2

The Hillsboro
Floods of 1914 and
1972
by Bob Barnes
JUNE 10, 1914 - During the night of June 10, 1914, a major storm settled over the Black Range and a significant flash flood swept down Percha Creek on the east side of the range and through Hillsboro. (Luna Leopold, Aldo Leopold’s son, wrote of the June 10 event in the TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION, August 1946 [Volume 27, Number IV]. (pp. 535-439) The data referred to here are
from that paper.
No rainfall gauging stations were located in the Percha drainage at the time of this event. Between 9 and 11:30 that night 1.05 inches fell at Lake Valley; 1.48 inches fell that night at the Diamond Ranch; and between 8 and 11:45 that night 1.3 inches fell in Hermosa. The US Weather Bureau believed that more fell in the Percha drainage than at nearby gauging stations. See the “C” annotation in a graph Leopold included in his paper [link above]. It shows isolines of assumed rainfall amounts and indicates that in excess of 1.5 inches fell in the Hillsboro and Trujillo watersheds that
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